Video Games

What Did You Play This Weekend?

With all the talk about the upcoming Civilization V flying around, I decided to pick up Civilization IV and check it out. Between playing the tutorial (Sid Meier's mouth-animationless avatar is super creepy, by the way) and establishing the great civilization of Beeonia, I clocked about 9 hours of game-time this weekend. I've got a savegame at about 720 A.D., but a dozen or so turns after that my apparent mismanagement from earlier in the game sends things off the rails. I've tried a few times to go down different paths, but something bad always happens - mostly invasion by the Greeks, but I get the sense that my rotting cities are on the verge of true collapse as well. The temptation is to continue trying over and over until I can somehow find a path to a glorious future, but I'm thinking a more appropriate lesson is to let things completely fall apart and see where those chips will fall. If the game would let me, I'd start scrawling "Look on my works ye Mighty and despair" on everything I build from here on out.